Tunisia, Tatooine-style

Last month, the BFI showed the long-suppressed 1977 print of Star Wars. Which got me reminiscing about my backpacking days…

Let’s start with a confession: I don’t qualify as a Star Wars fan. Like every nine-year-old in 1977, I queued down the block for a space opera that blew my mind and redefined what movies could be, for better or worse. Three years later The Empire Strikes Back was even more epic – but a lot of what followed was mediocre or just plain rubbish in my view.

With little else to do during a six-week trip to Tunisia in 2002, however – it’s all in my forthcoming travelogue, which this is an edited extract from – tracking down Star Wars locations was an obvious no-brainer for a sci-fi enthusiast like me. To that end, I even found an American couple’s now-defunct website, Star Wars Traveler, that documented every intergalactic dune, rock and crater with obsessive precision.

I assumed I’d bump into a gaggle of British, American and Australian geeks on mildly embarrassing pilgrimages to their childhood fantasies. So picture my surprise when I rolled into Ajim, a fishing port on the island of Djerba, and discovered I was the nuttiest Star Wars fan the locals had seen in months.

Struggling to get my bearings, I pored over a map until a confident 12-year-old cyclist skidded up to me. Keen to flex her English in a land of Arabic and colonial French, she fired off the usual questions – name, country, job – then hit me with the cultural sucker punch: “Why aren’t you married?” Not having children, she added with concern, was “very sad”.

Sad? Sad? What on earth was she talking about? I was here to find Obi-Wan Kenobi’s little stone hermit shack!

The Jedi knight’s humble home, a whitewashed outhouse on the planet Tatooine in the film, sat three kilometres outside town on a sandy coastal road. Lucas swapped it for a digital effect in the 1997 Special Edition, which purists still complain about. In fact, so rare is the full 1977 print that the BFI Southbank made a song and dance about screening it in London last month.

But I digress…

Ajim’s other claim to sci-fi fame is the Mos Eisley spaceport cantina. Everyone remembers the chaotic interior scenes, shot in a studio in England, with the bald-headed, bug-eyed alien saxophonists. The exterior’s more of a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it affair.

I wasn’t sure what the cantina looked like until a passing local dad, noticing my befuddlement, asked in French if he could help.

“Star Wars,” I explained with expansive gestures. “You know, Star Wars?”

He looked puzzled.

“Space,” I said hopefully, motioning to the clear blue sky above us. “L’espace.”

“Ah, La Guerre des Etoiles!” he exclaimed with sudden understanding. The War of the Stars… Trust the French to make even pulp sci-fi sound like a literary masterpiece.

Chuckling at my enthusiasm, he put a friendly arm around my shoulders and pointed to a building that was roughly the size of an electricity substation. It looked like a concrete dome with a small, square toilet block attached to it. The wretched hive of scum and villainy had seen better days.

Where the Skywalkers used to sleep

I was far more smitten with the Hotel Sidi Driss, also known to film fans as the Skywalker homestead. For one thing, you could sleep in it and wake up in a movie set.

The townspeople of Matmata were traditionally troglodytes. They’d carved circular pits into the earth to escape the brutal desert heat, with cool rooms branching off like wheel spokes. Most residents now live in ordinary concrete houses, but the Sidi Driss achieved Hollywood immortality when Star Wars location scouts stumbled across it. As long as dorks watch films, it’ll be Luke, Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru’s place.

The Attack of the Clones prequel crew had filmed there recently, so one of the hotel’s two interconnected courtyards flaunted Flash Gordon-esque decor that looked delightfully silly and cool. As a breakfast spot for nerds, it was unbeatable.

I planned to stay for one night only, but clumsily twisted my ankle at Matmata’s troglodyte museum, forcing me to rest another day. Nursing angry red bruises that made walking painful, I propped open my man-cave door for air and settled in with a book. Mid-afternoon, two chubby Frenchmen squeezed through the five-foot entrance to snoop around my room like they owned the place.

In the deathless words of Han Solo, I had a bad feeling about this.

The sand person

What Tunisians called a ‘moto’, I knew better as a moped. What’s more, I could ride one without endangering myself. Motorbikes with gears were too complicated for me. But a simple scooter? I used to get around Gosport on one when I worked for the Portsmouth News. My colleagues had cars, but I was perfectly happy puttering around on two wheels like a pensioner on his way to the post office.

A roadside business in Tozeur, near the edge of the Sahara, rented these mechanical bad boys out to tourists. This was my ticket to a gorge nicknamed Star Wars Canyon where, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, the Jawas zapped R2-D2, and the Sand People ambushed Luke Skywalker. Raiders of the Lost Ark was filmed here too, as was The English Patient, and yet no one gives a toss about those.

My Tunisian moto could reach speeds of up to 60 miles an hour, twice that of the moped I’d used for work. After a quick practice session that didn’t result in death, I donned a one-size-fits-all rubbery black helmet and hit the desert highway. Near the village of El Mahassen, I turned off the main road to check out the shrines of two Muslim holy men.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. The marabouts of Sidi Bou Helal and Sidi Bel Abbes stand out like cut-price Taj Mahals in the empty desert landscape, but my mind was focused on a bleeping droid from the 1970s that looked like a hi-tech litter bin.

Scooting past an industrial plant with steam rising from its chimneys, I parked beside the larger marabout (above). A man in work overalls appeared from nowhere like a mirage, speaking French and leading me up to the shrine. Tunisia’s tourist industry was more omnipresent than I'd given it credit for.

Despite my insistence that I didn’t need a guide, he pointed out which of the two adjacent gorges I was looking for and helpfully snapped a photo of me with Star Wars Canyon in the background.

Clutching a printout from Star Wars Traveler, I explored the gorge in more detail than was strictly necessary. And while I’m not entirely certain it’s the right spot, I took a photo of the bare shelf of rock where I think R2-D2 was electrocuted.

An opening in the rocks led back to my faithful moto. I braced myself for the inevitable cash demand, but all the guy wanted was a cigarette. I handed him a dinar, which I reckoned would pay for a pack. It was the least I could do for a man who’d helped me relive a thrilling three seconds of my childhood.

With more than half of my five-hour rental period left, I returned to Tozeur and carried on towards Onk Jemal, a hill in the desert shaped at the summit like a camel’s head. Ralph Fiennes establishes a camp here in The English Patient. I’d a hazy notion that sets for The Phantom Menace were nearby.

The sandy road, built by The English Patient’s crew, rattled my bones like a paint mixer. To make matters worse, two people I’d mistaken for tourists at Onk Jemal turned out to be Tunisian urchins who kept pointing at my pocket. Alone in the desert with a nine-year-old and his teenage brother grabbing at my moped with mounting aggression, I put my foot down and roared towards what I hoped was Tozeur, whooping with relief when a row of traditional Berber tents near the town swam into view.

Back at my lodgings, I double-checked the Star Wars fan sites with growing horror. “Don’t go into the desert without a guide, a four-wheel drive, and plenty of water,” one of them cautioned. Perhaps I should have read the fine print first.

Next day, an organised 4x4 tour miles into the Sahara brought home what a reckless idiot I’d been. On a more positive note, The Phantom Menace sets were sensational. I didn’t care that they were held together with chicken wire and swarming with international tourists. By suspending my disbelief, I felt like I was on an alien world, even if just for a moment. How glorious is that?